


Doppelgänger

by GrammiaArge



Series: Seeing Double [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fae, Changelings, Everything is the same basically but Danny has a changeling brother, Except for jazz and Sam and tucker, Gen, Jazz Has The Braincells, TWO Danny Fentons!, Vlad might come eventually, What’s better than one Danny Fenton?, look I love Maddie and Jack Fenton but they’re really not the best parents, props for effort I guess, that nobody is aware of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27219577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrammiaArge/pseuds/GrammiaArge
Summary: Danny Fenton was a really strange kid. His parents were ghost hunters, he was half dead himself, and he has a changeling brother that his parents didn’t know about.Surprisingly, he’s used to the weirdness.
Series: Seeing Double [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1995061
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	Doppelgänger

**Author's Note:**

> A little look into Danny and Darrock before The Incident.

“I’m sorry,” came a voice nearly identical to his own. The other rested his head against Danny’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to get us lost.”

“Mummy and daddy are gonna get mad at us,” Danny replied through chattering teeth. The creature looked at him with sad eyes. The both of them were cold, alone, in the snow. They hadn’t meant to get lost, they both knew they’d be in trouble otherwise, but… 

The creature  _ needed _ to find Danny, because his parents would miss him and he wasn’t their  _ real _ son. He didn’t mean to get lost… hopefully they won’t be  _ too _ mad. 

The creature sniffled and huddled closer to Danny, trying to find some semblance of warmth. He has Danny’s face, soft cheeks and a little button nose that’s gone pale pink from the cold. Though his eyes are a sharper blue, his ears point in an odd way, and his teeth are a little too sharp, he still looks like Danny. 

His name is also Danny, because that’s what the Fentons call him. Danny, the human one, knows better. 

_ Darrock _ , the changeling, just wants to go back inside. 

“I’m cold.” He shivers against Danny. They’re both scared. They’ve heard what happens to little boys and girls who stay out in the cold. They had to sit through two separate presentations from two separate families to show why it was  _ bad _ . 

“Me too,” Danny puffed, his breath misting. Exhaustion creeped at the edges of their eyes, before the strange pair were pulled to sleep by the cold that bore into them. 

———

They were found an hour later. 

The snow was scooped off their cold bodies, a lulling incarnation spoken to warm their aching bones. 

“Oh dear,” a melodic voice hummed. “Your mother is sure to pitch a fit.” The woman chuckled softly, using a clawed finger to brush the hair out of the human's face. He smiled in his sleep, snuggling against her fur coat. 

“But… your parents don’t know, do they, mo stóirín?” The lady sighed. “Of course not, they hunt ghosts. They’d sooner turn their guns to us than believe we’re here to help.”

“ _ Roisin _ ?” A soft voice called, thick with sleep. Darrock raised his head, piercing blue eyes staring right at the tall lady who held them. 

She smiled. “Yes sweetheart, I’m here.” She smiled at him, teeth peaking out from beneath her lips. Darrock closed his eyes again and drifted off back asleep with a pleased hum, happy to be with his caretaker again. 

Roisin huffed and rose to her feet, both the children held snug in her arms. She felt rather ridiculous and knew she probably looked it too—in her giant, red, fur lined coat, with two children held in her arms, their heads tucked into her shoulders—but she wasn’t about to let any creatures judge her for it. She was fucking Roisin Of Ireland, and anything with half a brain knew better than to piss her off. 

She cast a glance back to the sleeping human on her right shoulder. “Perhaps I should get you home sooner rather than later, little human,” she chuckled. “Wouldn't want your ghost hunter parents to worry, now, would we?”

———

Jazz Fenton was only five years old, but she was already much smarter than everyone else in her class. Which is why when Danny came down one day looking slightly different and complaining about bad dreams, she knew something was wrong. 

Even if her parents didn’t notice. 

Danny continued his odd behavior for over half a year. He’d always use the cutlery with a napkin wrapped around it, he avoided the basement like the plague, he’d spontaneously burst into quiet tears, he’d seem to talk quietly to his own shadow… if Jazz wasn’t the smart big sister she was, she’d think it was ghosts. 

But she knew that it wasn’t ghosts, because she was smart and knew that if it was, then her parents would have noticed and taken care of the issue already. 

( _ Nevermind the fact that it’s been seven months and they still haven’t noticed something was off about Danny _ ).

But Jazz was smart, and good at reading and she had read a big book (it had a hard cover and was very thick and had big words she couldn’t understand so that made her smart, right?) that talked about something called “site-call-oh-gee” and it meant that sometimes the brain did bad things that made people feel bad, and if Danny felt bad then it was her job as the big sister to make it better, right?

Jazz was six at this point. She went into Danny’s room one night. 

The bed was empty. 

“Danny?” She said to the empty room. “Danny, I don’t wanna play hide and go seek please. I want to talk with you.” She was a little scared, because she was small and Danny’s room was dark, even with the light up glow stars that her daddy had helped her and Danny stick up on the roof of the room because Danny was scared of the dark. But Jazz was a big girl and big girls aren’t scared of the dark so she just took in a big breath ( _ inhale for four seconds hold for seven seconds exhale for eight seconds it calms you down when you’re scared _ ) and closed the door behind her. 

“I don’t know why you’re so sad at the moment, but if you say then I promise I won’t tell on you,” she said softly, holding her hands close to her chest as she padded into the room. “I won’t tell on you if you did something naughty, I promise.”

“ _Go away_!” A voice sniffled from underneath the bed and that was when Jazz realized that whatever it was it was _not_ _Danny_. 

But she promised she wouldn’t tell, and breaking promises is bad, so… “you’re my little brother, and you’re  _ sad _ . I can’t let you be sad.” That would make her a bad big sister. Even if the thing under the bed was not Danny, Jazz was big enough to know that you shouldn’t be scared of the monsters under the bed because they’re not real, and even if that is a monster, it’s crying very hard and Jazz knows you should never let someone cry without giving them a big hug. 

“I’m not your little brother,” The creature wailed. “I want to go home.”

Jazz walked over to the bed and crouched down. She could hear what sounded like a cat hissing, followed by frantic scuffling. Whatever was under there was scared of her. Which was bad, because Jazz wasn’t scary. She didn’t want it to be scared of her. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she whispered, peeking under the bed. A pair of sharp, glowing blue eyes glared at her, the creature hissing through his tears. That wouldn’t do. 

Jazz held her hand out. “I promise.” She gave her best big sister smile, even though she knew it looked weird because she was missing a tooth from the top of her mouth which meant that she had a gap that caused all her ‘s’ sounds to go funny, but it had worked to calm down her brother before, so surely it would calm down whatever… this thing was? 

Her plan worked, and she felt a smaller hand—those are claws, it has claws—shakily grab onto her own, and the creature let her pull him out from under the bed. 

‘He looks like Danny,’ is her first, and most obvious thought. And he does. But… it’s not Danny as well. 

Not Danny has the same, round face as Danny, with the same pouty lips and the same big round eyes and the same button nose. But his eyes are sharper and bluer, and his pupils (which refuse to meet her eyes) are in a sort of needle shape like a cat’s. His hands have little black claws on the ends of them that flex as he rubs his hands nervously, his canines are sharp, like a dog’s or a wolf’s, and his ears are pointy like the elf thingies in the movies that Daddy showed her. He has little spots under his cheeks that glow a soft green in the darkness, and his hair seems to be made of softer stuff than Danny’s hair (almost like touching the feathers of a baby duck). 

“I’m sorry,” Not Danny sniffled. “I didn’t mean to take his place, but I—my family—and they couldn’t keep me anymore, so they put me here til they knew what to do with me—n they’ll come back n take me away—and I can feel him get sad, and then I get sad and then we’re both sad and I—and I—and…” he dissolved into a puddle of hysterical tears. “Don’t tell mummy and daddy—they’ll hurt me—I’m a bad little boy and they’ll hit me with the bright green stuff and I don’t want to be hurt…” 

Jazz decided that she will not tell her parents about the Not Danny living in their house. 

“I’ll find a way to get you home,” she promised. “I won’t tell mummy or daddy about you, because you’re still my little brother. Even if…” she pinched a pointy ear. “You have a funny looking face.”

“I don’t!” The Not Danny sqwuarked. “I don’t have a funny looking face!” 

“Yeah you do!”

“ _ No _ !”

———

Tucker Foley was a very smart boy. He may not have had many friends (because he had big glasses and knew lots of things), but he was still very smart. 

Which was why it didn’t take long for him to notice something was wrong with Danny Fenton. 

Tucker had no friends besides him, and they were only friends because one day, Dash was picking on him for his big glasses and love of computers, and Danny came over and  _ bit him _ . 

He got detention from the teachers for it, because Dash cried very loudly and because Dash was liked by the teachers but Danny was not, but Danny didn’t seem to be bothered about it when he looked at Tucker and smiled brightly with the same teeth that he used to bite another kid and said “ _ let’s be friends! _ ” and that was that. 

They quickly became best friends, which made all the parents happy because Danny didn’t like making friends and nobody liked making friends with Tucker, so at least they had each other. But Tucker quickly noticed that Danny was very, very suspicious.

He didn’t want to say anything, because that would be  _ mean _ , and he might have only been 8 years old but he knew that calling people weird was rude and that you shouldn’t do it.  _ Especially _ considering Danny was his only friend. But Danny was  _ very _ weird. 

He really liked the movie Peter Pan, which made sense because it was a good movie, but he always spoke about it like he knew what it was like to be whisked away into a magic world. He spoke about how there was a really pretty world that someone like Peter Pan would take him too with very pretty castles that hung from the _sky_ and little houses for little tiny people, and that the people there were very nice but they had funny faces so you couldn’t laugh at them and most importantly _you_ _can’t tell anyone about this tucker it’s a secret!!!_

Tucker was called a nerd by the others at school. He liked computers and old cell phones and liked watching reruns of Star Trek with his dad. 

But he also liked watching Peter Pan and the Tinkerbell movies with Danny and the weird Not Danny with sharp teeth who bit Dash when they first met each other, because Danny and Darrock may have been weird but they were his _best_ _friends_ and they were both super duper nice and… well… 

All best friends have secrets that they keep. Who cares if this secret is that Danny has a magical fairy twin brother that he can’t tell anyone about? They watch Star Trek with him, so it’s not like it matters. 

———

Sam Manson was 11 years old and  _ really _ liked goth stuff. Like, a lot. 

She liked vampires in particular, but not the sparkly ones or the one from Sesame Street, the ones from the original Dracula story who would bite into peoples necks and kill them. She liked reading horror stories about demons and monsters because they were cool and she wasn’t like  _ other _ girls, who liked silly things like fairies. Because fairies were dumb and stupid and sparkly and Sam doesn’t  _ do _ dumb or stupid or sparkly. 

Which is why she didn’t like Danny Fenton or Tucker Foley that much. Because they liked fairies and fairies were  _ dumb _ and  _ stupid _ and  _ sparkly _ . 

Sam Manson didn’t need any friends, because vampires didn’t have any friends. They sat in their Victorian castles wearing big cloaks and brooding about how hard their life was and that was what Sam was okay with doing. 

But Sam was lonely. 

Eventually, she started hanging closer around Danny and Tucker, because they were weird like her, and she may not have liked fairies ( _ I’m not like other girls I’m not dumb stupid or sparkly I’m different I’m special _ ) but she also had no friends and they had no friends besides each other so maybe they’d let her be friends with them too?

And then Sam noticed that they were  _ more _ than weird. 

Danny in particular was odd. He loved Peter Pan and the Tinkerbell movies, but he also liked horror stuff like Coraline and Paranorman, and he’d even watched some of the big kid movies like Frankenstein and this one movie called Changeling, which she’d never heard about before, but he always spoke about it like it was dumb and that he knew better. 

In fact, he always spoke like he was two different people. Like he had a secret twin that nobody knew about. 

Sam didn’t know what to do, so she searched up what a changeling was, because Danny and Tucker always got quiet around her whenever she asked about them and changed the subject, so if she wasn’t getting any answers from  _ them _ , then she’d ask the internet. 

And changelings were fairies. 

But they weren’t. They couldn’t be! Because fairies were dumb and stupid and sparkly and changelings were cool, because they took a human child’s place and they grew up with humans, but why would they do that?

Then she read up more on fairies and suddenly they weren’t so  _ dumb _ and  _ stupid _ and  _ sparkly _ anymore. Suddenly, they were spooky, because they would steal kids. Suddenly, they were unsettling, because they could make themselves appear human and trick you into giving them your soul. Suddenly, they were  _ cool _ . 

And suddenly,  _ Danny _ wasn’t just  _ Danny _ anymore, but he was Danny the human and Darrock the Changeling, and they trusted her enough to tell her this, so she couldn’t tell anyone, not even her parents. And she was fine like that

Because she was Sam Manson, she was 11 years old, and she liked goth stuff  _ and _ fairies. 

After all, one of her best friends was one. 

———

Danny the human and Darrock the changeling take turns living in the Fenton household. 

Darrock has no family because they died when he was young, so he stays with a pretty fairy lady called Roisin in a weird place called Underhill. 

This week is Danny’s turn in the Fenton household, because he has a test due in science class this week and Danny  _ loves _ science but Darrock hates it. Next week will be Darrocks turn, because Mr Lancer is preparing for an English essay on Shakespeare and Darrock  _ loves _ Shakespeare but Danny hates it. 

Sam, Danny and Tucker are in the Fenton basement, staring at the supposedly ‘broken’ Fenton portal. 

“Look I’m telling you, you should check it out!” Sam urges. “Your parents said it’s broken anyways, and portals to a place with ghosts is  _ super _ goth.”

“Look, I’m not so sure, Sam.” Danny rubs the back of his neck nervously. He can feel a wave of reassurance in the back of his mind and in his heart coming from Darrock, who must feel his nervousness through their Bond. “It could be dangerous…”

“Sams right Danny,” Tucker says, not even looking up from his phone. “Besides, the portal is unplugged, so even if it  _ did _ work, it couldn’t turn on. Also, you regularly go down into a realm with completely weird ass terrain that looks like something out of a goddamn Escher painting nightmare. I’m sure you can handle a broken portal machine.”

Danny huffs, and reluctantly zips up the stupid hazmat suit that Sam is forcing him into. “Fine. I’ll check it out,” he relents. 

“Hang on, hold still for a second…” Sam peels the sticker of his dads face off the suit, giving it a quick pat to brush off any sticky residue. “It’ll be fine Dannyyy! Tucker and I will be right on the other side, and besides! Imagine if you fixed the portal? Think about how happy your parents will be!” 

Danny grimaces at the thought, because truthfully he doesn’t  _ want _ his parents to get this portal open. He doesn’t know what they’ll do if they can get their hands on such a large supply of ghosts, but considering their track record… he’s not sure he  _ wants _ to know. 

Danny shakes those thoughts out of his head, and slowly walks into the empty portal. 

It’s giant metal doorway reminds Danny of a mouth, and with each step inside he feels more like he’s being swallowed by something big and dangerous. It’s an uncomfortable feeling that sinks to the bottom of his gut like rocks, and makes each step into the portal feel even more nerve wracking. 

The portal is pretty bland, actually, just metal paneling, bolts and screws, a few discarded wires. Nothing of interest. 

Of course, he isn’t watching his feet and trips on something (a wire or a loose panel probably), catching himself on something raised and rectangular. 

As his hands accidentally find the brightly coloured ‘on’ button, Danny Fenton realizes a few things. 

One, the machine had a backup battery that it was siphoning power from, even while unplugged. 

Two, his parents were idiots for putting the power button _inside_ _the bloody machine_.

Three, getting electrocuted is _really_ _painful_. Like, incredibly painful. 

He can’t hear anything above his own screams, can’t feel anything beyond the nerve splitting heat and pain that wracks his entire body. He’s suddenly grateful that his parents were out today, because he wouldn’t want them to watch him get electrocuted ( _ oh my god he’s going to die. He’s going to die _ ). 

A surge of panic and extreme worry rushes through the empathetic bond that he and Darrock share, and the final thought that Danny has before he succumbs is that he really doesn’t want to leave the science essay to Darrock, because he knows that Darrock hates science. 


End file.
